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Republicans And Torture – A Love Story!

On Sunday night I kept trying to imagine what crazy shit the Republicans would come up with to both not give credit to President Obama and divert the credit towards President George “Pet Goat” Bush. I never imagined it would be the reprisal of the “waterboarding is good” meme. It’s just so hard to predict stupid, you know? I guess that’s a good thing, though. And of course the person who is primarily pushing it is none other than the PR guy for waterboarding, Rep. Peter King of New York. I’m sorry but that man is as dumb as a box of rocks. From ThinkProgress…

KING: Well I don’t know if everyone knows this or not, but you mentioned the fact that we obtained information several years ago, vital information about the courier for Obama [sic]. We obtained that information through waterboarding. So for those who say that waterboarding doesn’t work, who say it should be stopped and never used again, we got vital information which directly led us to bin Laden.

O’REILLY: Wow! Let me stop you there. I did not know that and I’m sure most of my audience didn’t know that. Explain how that went down. How did we get that information, where did it come from, was it from Guantanamo Bay?

KING: It came from an overseas prison where Khaled Sheik Mohammed was being interrogated. Waterboarding was used, and it was during the interrogation of Khaled Sheik Mohammed, through waterboarding, that this information was learned.

O’REILLY: KSM gave it up? Mohammed himself gave it up?

KING: KSM gave us the first lead.

That was a complete fabrication that his fellow Republicans and former Bush minions admitted back when the “waterboarding is good” meme was being developed. I’m not even going to bother to chase down the quotes, sometimes I think Republicans say stupid shit just to keep us liberal bloggers occupied, chasing our tails. The linked stories debunk it pretty well anyway. I don’t always blame Republicans for knowingly lying, most are just so fucking stupid that they don’t know better, but they will defend that stupidity to the death.

But getting to the heart of the matter, you have to wonder why so many on the right like inflicting pain on other people, is it some sort of a “blood lust” or something. I once shot an interview with a World War II veteran who fought with the Red Arrow Division in what was the bloodiest front of the war, Buna/New Guinea. After the interview, as we were standing around he told me how when he was hiding in the jungles, constantly looking for Japanese soldiers. known as the fiercest of fighters, he had this obsession, a lust for wanting to kill as many “Japs” as he could. It was his mission. I wish the camera had been rolling. He said it was a kill or be killed attitude, it’s really hard to convey it in words. I have to equate a similar mindset to people like Rep. Peter King and the other crazy Rep. King, Steve from Iowa. From TPM…

The most prominent of these conservatives was Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who took to Twitter to ask sardonically, “Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now?

[…]

“The news is sure to reignite debate over whether the now-closed interrogation and detention program was successful,” the AP wrote. “Former president George W. Bush authorized the CIA to use the harshest interrogation tactics in U.S. history. President Barack Obama closed the prison system.”

There’s just one problem. The key bit of intel wasn’t acquired via torture, according to a more fleshed out version of the same report.

So the AP ran with a very flimsy story that seemed to evolve over time. I call it “Evolving Journalism“. I particularly notice it whenever I am dumbstruck and go over to Salon.com to torture myself with the writing of Glenn Greenwald, who loves to update his stories many times over. But, is that what we should expect from the AP now?

Besides the “blood lust” theory I proposed, I really don’t understand the mentality of these people who want to justify torture. Making the connection between information gleaned many years ago to what happened on Sunday is a huge stretch, even if we play along with them on the “waterboarding did it” idea. It’s like 6 years later, trails get pretty cold after 6 years. The only other thing that comes to mind is that kid in the neighborhood who liked to pull the wings off insects or do other hideous things to small animals, well, I guess some of them grow up to be Congressmen and Senators and they just have graduated up to torturing humans.

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Sunday evening my partner shouted at me from the big room that Osama was dead. Since I knew he was watching the Phillies-Met game on ESPN, I just laughed back at him but he was serious. I turned on my TV in the computer room and noticed MSNBC was no longer playing their usual weekend marathon of cop/crime/prison shows…something had to be up! So I began flipping between channels then for the rest of the night into morning, going between ABC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox. I was anxious to get the latest news and Geraldo Rivera on Fox was doing as good a job as anyone else. I had the good feeling that our nation was at a rare non-partisan moment….THEN, noticed Fox soon began to have interviews with ONLY Republican politicians and talking heads. Quickly began the theme on Fox that Bush deserved all of the praise, or at least he and The Dick Cheney had prepared the complete foundation to “git ‘er done!” But for a few minutes Sunday night, I felt that maybe our nation was UNITED! I can dream, can’t I?

I just checked in to my board,DFP, Sunday night to see if the new place I put my laptop was comfortable and they were all talking about “the President was going to make an announcement soon”. I’m so glad I did ’cause I was able to discuss what happened in real time instead of finding out about it the next day.

Somebody on there even guessed that it was about bin laden. We don’t allow rw trolls on our site so there’s no ugly lies trying to distract from reality..and, I don’t have a tv anymore but if I did I wouldn’t be watching the gop corporatemediawhores frothing at the mouth with jealousy over the Secret Navy Seal Team’s killing of bin laden under President Obama’s leadership.

You gotta admit watching the right wingers try to re-write history is interesting to watch. Repugs and their allies in the right wing press spent the last two years acting like George W.Bush was never president but they’re so desperate to knee cap this president they willingly to bring Bush back up.
Never mind videos of Bush saying he’s not concerned about Bin Laden. The narrative from our side should be using the right wing tactic of flipping the script and call the likes of Sean Hannity anti-American.

Who The Hell Am I!

I’m a liberal that is extreme in some ways and not in others. I support President Obama and make no apologies for it. I think he has done a phenomenal job, especially when you consider that he inherited a huge mess and has faced unprecedented opposition from a lazy & desperate Republican Party. I’m a film producer/director/editor, adjunct professor, technician, media critic and photographer when I’m not reading left wing blogs and typing on this one. – On Twitter @ExtremeLiberal or Email at liberalforreal (at) gmail.com

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